Tia

Huxley's words press hard against my chest.

Kill Warren Thorne.

My father.

A man I once admired. A man I thought I loved. A man reckless with his logic and twisted with his science.

Huxley’s nieces are locked away. Becoming patients, not people, and still so young. A four-year-old little girl locked in a laboratory for her entire life? Her body being tested before it even has a chance to grow? I feel ill, bile rising in my throat at the thought.

I sit down, pressing my hands to my temples, ignoring my husbands as they offer to help. My mind spins, I don't want to think about the institutional state anyone in the laboratory must succumb to. Women becoming shells of what they once were, babies never having a chance to grow healthy and whole.

I close my eyes, unable to imagine the horror of what Emerson and Huxley saw when they went to Seattle. And I’m the one who asked them to go. Begged. Lied and stole away in the night. For what? So that the men I love could be tormented even more?

I look around me, trying to keep the room from spinning, concern in every man’s eyes.

I'm grateful I don't have to get through this on my own.

But those little girls. Huxley’s nieces.

Who is there to watch over them?

Who is there to protect them?

Only Huxley.

He’s choosing to be their savior, even knowing the cost. I never would have guessed Huxley was capable of the sacrifice he’s willing to make.

I steady my shallow breathing, trying to collect myself as the room around me erupts with opinions and arguments.

"It’s a suicide mission," Salinger says. "You want to kill the most influential scientist in the United States of America? They will put you in the goddamn electric chair."

"I don't care,” Huxley says, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He looks exhausted, but I’ve never seen him so resolute. “What is one life if it can save so many others?"

His surety catches me off guard.

I was challenged with the exact same question when Banks explained the things my father did to my body. My embryonic fluid and spinal fluid carry the cure. My babies would die, but with my sacrifice, others would survive.

An impossible decision.

I can’t, won’t sacrifice my children. Their lives matter and my heart already beats for each one of them.

But maybe that makes me the monster here. Unwilling to choose the greater good.

Because when it was presented to me, my first thought wasn't everyone else, it wasn’t about all the other mothers and their babies, the lives that would be lost if I do nothing. I was thinking about me. About the little ones growing in my womb.

Huxley though, he was acting selflessly.

If he killed my father, he would pay the ultimate price. With his life.

There’s a fire in his eyes, a fury beating in his heart. He won’t rest until he does this.

This much I know: he's not an easy man or a simple one. He’s complicated, and the risks he takes on a regular basis have shaped him into the man he is.

Determined.

Focused.

Clear-headed.

Willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

I'm not saying the other men I love aren’t capable of taking enormous risks, they are, and they have. Giles, Fallon, and Emerson risk their lives for the greater good everytime they go on a mission.

Banks spends countless hours working on a cure, risking his job and mental health to save lives. Even Salinger has taken risks, going against his parents to protect me and the other men in this compound.

But Huxley is different. I hadn’t really realized it before. Or maybe I’d been so focused on myself and the others that I never looked deeper than the surface. Every day he goes to his shop and takes life-altering risks with each deal he makes. He works with crooks and hardened criminals.

He just admitted to us all he has been in alliance with my father. Who else has he worked for?

I’m not sure I want to know.

His acts are criminal, and yet his motivation is good.

"You would be putting a target on all our backs," Fallon says, dark blond hair sticking up from pulling at it. "If you kill Warren Thorne, you’ll be put in prison but you know what will happen next? They’ll want to know who your accomplices were. And fingers will be directed at us."

"I agree," Banks says. "How the hell can we take care of Tia if we’re all behind bars?"

Of course, my husbands disagree. Six men, all with strong opinions and different views, I’m the one bridge to all their hearts. The one thing they truly have in common is a deep desire for my safety. For our children's safety.

Even Huxley. I should never have doubted him. He wants to secure my safety as much as any of my husbands.

But the babies I carry are not our only family.

"We would do this if it was Mason," I say softly to Emerson, remembering the boy’s sweet smile as he told us about caring for the sheep on the farm. His face was lit with innocence. His heart still so light. I ask the others, "If Mason was in trouble, locked up somewhere, you would drop what you’re doing and fight for his freedom. But you won’t do the same for the girls?"

"It's not that simple, Tia," Salinger says, pleading with me. He drops to his knees and takes my hands in his.

"Nothing in this world is simple,” I say, squeezing his hand before turning to Huxley. “But I do know this, I'm with Huxley on this. And I’m proud of you."

"Proud of me?" Huxley asks, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. And he’s not the only one. There are murmurs around the room. "After the things I’ve done?” He glances down at the floor. “After the women I've sent to the very place you ran away from? That’s nothing to be proud of."

I hate the way his eyes have turned dark. The storm is brewing so deeply inside of him, I wonder how I hadn't seen it before. Or maybe Huxley has gotten good at keeping it at bay, hiding it from the world.

And maybe I've been naïve enough to believe that our pasts are in our past.

Of course, they’re not. They’re catching up to us every day, in every way. Helene coming here, to our doorstep threatening Emerson. Lawson arriving, making me a bargaining chip. Salinger's father, demanding the truth. And now my father coming to Alaska to take me away from the only real family I’ve known.

All around us, the past is inching closer and closer.

And in two days time, it will suffocate us all.

My father is not a lionheart like Emerson. He's not a protector like Giles or a leader like Fallon. He’s not self-deprecating like Salinger or cocky like Huxley. And he's certainly not smart like Banks.

My father is a fool who can’t see the forest for the trees. He doesn't care about flesh and blood. He cares about his legacy.

And he'll stop at nothing to get it.

So, yes, I’m proud of Huxley, because he made the choice to finally end the torment caused by a monster of a man, even if it meant risking his own life in the process.

Huxley is looking for redemption from his past mistakes. How can any of us argue with his motivation? The only thing we can do now is come up with a better plan that doesn’t end with my husbands behind bars.